Best Museum Curator (2010)

Curating art exhibitions can seem like thankless work. Not only do curators have to deal with the artists themselves, who are often sensitive and sometimes downright temperamental, but they also have to work with museum directors, a notoriously driven lot with, shall we say, healthy egos. As senior curator at the Boca Museum, where she has been since 1997, Wendy Blazier is the unseen hand behind the scenes. She knows what it's like to run the show from both perspectives, having previously worked as executive director and curator at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood for more than 15 years. In the past year, she has worked with living artists (Stephen Althouse, Clyde Butcher, Enrique Martínez Celaya), and she has overseen exhibitions curated elsewhere before they arrived, such as the landmark M.C. Escher retrospective and the upcoming Elvis show. She also manages the museum's extensive permanent collection, a significant portion of which is always on display in the upstairs galleries — a daunting task in itself but just part of the job description for the seemingly tireless Blazier.